


A Child

by DuncanByrne



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s02e01 The Child, F/F, POV Female Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Space Wives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 10:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14893116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuncanByrne/pseuds/DuncanByrne
Summary: Deanna Troi reflects on her treatment at the hands of an alien and her marriage with Beverly. Based on the episode "The Child"





	A Child

I’ve always dreamed of being a mom, but it was so wrong, the way it happened with that thing. 

I’ve never for a second wished I’d gotten the abortion, but carrying Ian was just bizarre--looking down and seeing my belly suddenly swollen up with this big boy kicking his tiny feet against my tummy even though it was just two nights ago that the alien woke me up in the middle of the night with the flash of golden light and the warm tingling feeling crawling up my thighs. It was like I was having one of those anxious half-nightmares where your brain drives you through some crazy scenario--losing all your teeth, being unashamedly nude in a public place, giving birth after a two-day pregnancy--and you wake up laughing at how gullible you are when you’re asleep. 

Except this was real, and I’m starting to wish it wasn’t. When I imagined motherhood as a kid, I thought of the baby growing in your stomach while your husband patted your belly contentedly, and then you had a couple years where you could coo over this adorable baby that looked like a doll, and then sometime later the kid would get bigger and help you make cupcakes. 

Now, when I realized I was lesbian, I realized that the chances of pregnancy happening to me had gone far down, but when I married Beverly, I still had the same fantasy, even if Bev was replacing my vision of the perfect (male) spouse: having a beautiful, bouncing baby to sing lullabies and read children’s books to when we got home from work. Feeding that baby spoonfuls of uttaberry pudding and putting them to bed with the satisfied smile of a woman who knows she and her wife have a life of love and devotion to look forward to with the slowly growing member of their family. 

For Ian’s entire short life, Beverly tried to be nice to him, entertain him, teach him, but it still felt wrong to me. He wasn’t our son. Any child could be our child, but that alien didn’t make me a mother. It made me the worthless surrogate for its sick science experiment. It made me an object whose feelings towards motherhood mattered less than its desire to be casually acquainted with a surface level experience of humanity. It may not have destroyed me and Beverly’s dream of having daughters. But it raped me.


End file.
